Emmanuel Saez (born November 26, 1972) is a French, naturalized American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...
who is Professor of Economics at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
.
His work, done with
Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty (; born 7 May 1971) is a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the I ...
and
Gabriel Zucman
Gabriel Zucman (born 30 October 1986) is a French economist who is currently an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley‘s Goldman School of Public Policy. The author of '' The Hidden Wealth o ...
, includes tracking the incomes of the poor, middle class and rich around the world. Their work shows that top earners in the United States have taken an increasingly larger share of overall income over the last three decades, with almost as much inequality as before the Great Depression. He recommends much higher (marginal) taxes on the rich, up to 70% or 90%. He received the
John Bates Clark Medal
The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
in 2009, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2010, and an honorary degree from Harvard University in 2019.
Research
Emmanuel Saez graduated from the
École Normale Supérieure
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, S ...
in 1996 where he studied mathematics and economics. He then received his
Ph.D
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
. in economics from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999.
Saez has written extensively on the theory of optimal taxation and transfer, addressing topics such as wealth and income inequality, capital income taxation, and retirement. In addition to his theoretical work, he has authored a number of empirical papers, many of them applying the results from his theoretical work to US household data. His focus on the top 0.1% of the income and wealth distribution has led to his political theories about the "great compression" and the "great divergence" and led to significant research on the consensus about the ideal wealth distribution.
Saez's research on wealth and
income inequality
There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
has largely focused on households at the top of the wealth and income distributions, which make up a significant portion of the US tax base.
Conservative critics, such as James Pethokoukis of the
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
, say that Saez and Piketty measure "market income," the total income before tax excluding income from government. Saez describes it as gross income reported on tax returns before any deductions. This excludes unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps,
Medicare,
Medicaid
Medicaid in the United States is a federal and state program that helps with healthcare costs for some people with limited income and resources. Medicaid also offers benefits not normally covered by Medicare, including nursing home care and per ...
, Social Security and employer-provided health insurance. Saez says that these are the best data available, as measured consistently since 1913. Critics say that they exaggerate inequality.
In 2011, Saez and
Peter Diamond
Peter Arthur Diamond (born , 1940) is an American economist known for his analysis of U.S. Social Security policy and his work as an advisor to the Advisory Council on Social Security in the late 1980s and 1990s. He was awarded the Nobel Memori ...
argued in public media a widely discussed paper that the proper marginal tax rate for North Atlantic societies and especially the United States to impose is 73% (substantially higher than the current 42.5% top US marginal tax rate).
Together with
Raj Chetty and others he researched
social mobility in the US. They found substantial geographic differences across the country that were correlated with five factors: segregation,
income inequality
There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
, local school quality, social capital, and family structure.
Awards
John Bates Clark Medal
He was the recipient of the 2009
John Bates Clark Medal
The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
, awarded to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."
Saez's research contributions have been mainly in the field of Public Economics. The 2009 John Bates Clark citation reads:
" aez'swork attacks policy questions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, on the one hand refining
the theory in ways that link the characteristics of optimal policy to measurable aspects of the economy and of
behavior, while on the other hand undertaking careful and creative empirical studies designed to fill the gaps
in measurement identified by the theory. Through a collection of interrelated papers, he has brought the
theory of taxation closer to practical policy making, and has helped to lead a resurgence of academic interest
in taxation."
MacArthur Fellow
In 2010, the
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...
named Saez a MacArthur Fellow for his research into the connection between income and tax policy.
See also
*
Inequality in the United States
*
Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States
Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States discusses how tax policy affects the distribution of income and wealth in the United States. Income inequality can be measured before- and after-tax; this article focuses on the after-tax as ...
References
External links
Emmanuel Saez's homepage"Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States" (September 3, 2013)Essays on the economics of income taxation PhD thesis (1999)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saez, Emmanuel
1972 births
Living people
21st-century French economists
Neo-Keynesian economists
Public economists
Labor economists
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Harvard University faculty
University of California, Berkeley faculty
MacArthur Fellows
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences